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Mitt Romney foreign policy speech called vague

Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech Monday was filled with tough talk and slams of President Barack Obama’s leadership — but little of the clarity Romney has vowed to bring to the Oval Office.

What the Republican nominee’s campaign billed as a major foreign policy address didn’t have much new in it and left some analysts unimpressed. The speech, they said, was much like Romney’s previous swings at laying out a foreign policy: couched in broad ideology and big ambitions and lacking the specifics for how he’d bring any of them about

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Romney's full address

Romney seemed eager to use the address to capitalize on the momentum he had from his strong debate performance and to reinforce the image of Obama as a feckless leader in over his head both abroad and at home. However, those looking for clear policy distinctions with the current White House were left wanting.

“There’s absolutely nothing in this speech. This is a repackaging of language that has been a staple of Romney’s campaign since he threw his hat in the ring,” said James Lindsay of the Council on Foreign Relations. “If Romney has a foreign policy strategy, he still has not told us what it is. The governor is very fond of saying hope is not a strategy, but that cuts both ways. He didn’t answer two key questions: what he would do differently and why we should expect what he would do to work.”

But one prominent foreign policy analyst, Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, offered qualified praise of Romney for raising the profile of foreign policy issues and for creating a counterbalance to those urging that the U.S. pull back around the world.

“I like the tone of patience and engagement even if I may disagree on certain specific substantive matters,” O’Hanlon said on Fox News just after Romney’s speech. “What Gov. Romney has done is make it easier to debate on both sides in terms of what are the next steps we need to take as Americans.”

Obama partisans panned Romney’s 23-minute speech and his overall rhetoric on international affairs as lacking in substance and nuance.

“There’s an awful lot of rhetoric and things, but when you get to the specifics, you just get the sense he doesn’t know exactly what tools to use,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on a conference call organized by the Obama campaign. “I just find him very shallow….To those not totally into foreign policy, it sounds pretty good, but it’s really full of platitudes.”

Referring to the op-ed on foreign policy that Romney published last week in The Wall Street Journal, Albright added, “I am a professor. If one of my students turned that in, he’d get a ‘C’ because he gave absolutely no specifics.”

Portions of Romney’s speech seemed to reflect a divide in Republican circles between foreign policy experts who have aggressively promoted democracy as a way to advance American goals in the Middle East and others who believe the Arab Spring movement threatens to unleash forces that could be more hostile to the United States and to Israel than the authoritarian regimes.

“The Republican Party and the conservative movements are divided between these two frameworks of analysis and Romney’s doesn’t actually choose between them — which is not to say he’s any worse than Obama,” said Steve Rosen, a conservative former director of foreign policy for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “The defense of the West’s agenda is not exactly the same as the Freedom Agenda. To some extent, the two things get confused.”

Obama voted against the surge in Iraq in 2007 that won the war. The Iraq and Bush governments put the timetable down. Obama simply carried it out.

Now you complain Romney aint 'specific enough' ? After your guy had 2 years of being a junior senator but he was good enough to be president?

Give me a break. How stupid do you think Americans are.

But here is something far more important.

I have been looking at the data for 5 days and unless we find a way to expand the workforce we wont be able to sustain some of the basic services we have.

The workforce is at a 40 year low, and that means no tax revenue and no consumer spending to create even more sales tax. No home buying and no property tax. The trickle down effect on an economy based on 70% consumer spending is Enormous.

President Obama has failed to expand the workforce and the very services he has sought to provide us are going to crash and burn within 18 months.

As vague on Foreign Policy as he is with everything else. No thank you Mr. Romney, we spent enough time in Iraq (too muc time actually), getting out was the right thing to do. As for what recently occured in Lybia, shouldn't you wait until ALL the information is in on that?

Given his foreign policy speeches and his attempts at going outside the country to appear presidential, it might be a good idea for him, at this point, to shut the h*ll up about foreign policy in general. There is not a moment that goes by when he attempts another swing at a foreign policy agenda where doesn't step on his d*ck.

Politico is full of it, always. Romney said this ""In Syria, I will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad's tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets."

Oddly, this is not considered evidence of what Romney would do. The problem with the way this left wing site works is that people think for themselves, and we know better. This may work to excite the liberals, but for people who listened to the speech, we know Politico is full of it. That is just true, and I read this site often. I suspect that many conservatives do to see how the MSM is going to try to spin good news for Romney.

Politico spent weeks posting poll numbers for Obama when he was supposedly up, but now they treat Romney being up like its not news. Its funny.

"WASHINGTON -- Mitt Romney sought to seize political momentum on a new front Monday, delivering a robust foreign policy speech that included a few new specifics and a sharp critique of the current U.S. course in the Middle East." From Huffpo's article on the speech. Apparently they don't share Politico's view that the speech was terrible and widely panned.

Remember when Republican conservatives told us that part of the reason we should invade Iraq is to start a democracy there, and one that would cause a chain reaction spreading liberty and freedom throughout the middle east.

Well, you can arguably say that was true.

What is pathetic is to now watch Republican conservatives bemoan liberty and freedom in the middle east because the people there are democratically choosing muslim people to lead them.